Dan Mazur's Kangchenjunga Spring 2002

11 April Dispatch: We awoke at 530, to galu the cook boy bringing us a delightful cup of milk tea. We got our loads better organized and sold and left behind 1 load each of flour, sugar, rice and chiura. Krishna the cook voiced dismay (and perhaps something else, as the cook is traditionally entitled to the spoils of over-victualled expeditions), but we had to watch our pennies, and the porters were charging 110% more this year than last time we were up here. We walked in boiling heat at only 1400 meters, and passed through the village of Asnillija (sp.) where we confronted with a very large and fresh mound of completed school exam books, piled in the middle of the trail outside what we presumed to be the school and/or district office. They had been perfunctorily dumped there, kerosene poured over the top, and set ablaze. Our feet stirred the ashes as we walked through the pile, and the wind blew small bits of pages around, with kids names and sums and sentences written on. It started to rain, appropriately. We walked, heads down, further along the beautiful be-jungled Tamur River, and made it to the village of Chiruwa at 1600 meters. It was windy and cold, and we looked at the camping place, and the cook gave it a thumbs down, and we went back into the village to find a bed at the inn. As our beds were sorted and the kitchen was set-up, we watched a well-dressed young man try to bash the lock off the Kangchenjunga Conservation Project office. First, he began using a stone, then he took an iron bar and tried to pry the lock open. We assumed this to be another act of rule-breaking in keeping with the exam books we had seen earlier, but later we found out he was an employee of the park, and had wanted to note our names in the register, but the man with the key had gone to the central office Lellok (sp.). We relaxed as a big rainstorm rolled in, and watched the light fade, and drank a glass of chang and tea ,and had a massive dinner of delicacies such as momos with homemade sauce and fresh mashed potatoes and good yak-cheese. There were three well-dressed Nepalese in the back of our lodge discussing something in hushed tones and looking at us, and we heard them discussing money in a heated debate and they looked kind of forbidding. As they were leaving their dinner to go up to their room they had to walk past us, sitting in the front room of the lodge, and as they passed we said "Namaste" to them and their faces lit up and they returned the greeting, and we asked them how they were and they said fine, and said they had trekked from Taplejung that day, and a conversation ensued, and it turned out they were graduate students of geography and sociology from Kathmandu. A fascinating 90 minute conversation ensued (they spoke superb English) and we learned all about the region, the politics, the sociology, the history, the language, the religion, etcetera. They had been here 6 times in three years. They definitely put our mind at ease and we gained a new understanding of what is and is not happening in this region. It seems that one conclusion might be that: "things are starting to get worse, some bad things have happened, but its not a full-blown crisis yet, but nobody knows exactly what is going to happen". We went to bed at 2030 pm, feeling a bit relieved and heartened by our meeting with these determined young Nepalese grad-students, who were not afraid and wanted to help their country see its way through the current debacle.

Thank you very much. Cheers for now. Yours
Sincerely, Daniel Mazur from http://www.SummitClimb.com

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